There are multiple instances of explorer.exe running in task manager (currently 7), each one using between 10-40MB of memory.

I know I'm a few years late on this reply, but the issue you described can be caused by Mozilla Firefox when using the "Open Containing Folder" selection in the context menu of the Download Bar, or any other application that launches an explorer window. Depends on the method they are using to spawn that window. It appears that the method Mozilla is using worked fine in XP, but does not work for Windows 7. I noticed a post about UTorrent as well. This application also has a menu option to Open a Containing Folder. which also worked fine on XP. This leads me to believe, that something has changed in the way Windows spawns an explorer window, and that the methods the 3rd party apps use, while they may work on XP, do not work in Win7...

In any case, after I pinned it down to Firefox as being the culprit in MY case, I reported the bug. The link is posted below. The guys are working hard on it over there.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=670068

There is a bug in Firefox - when you tell firefox to open containing folder of a file in the download directory, it spins a new instance of explorer.exe -

James

There is a bug in Firefox - when you tell firefox to open containing folder of a file in the download directory, it spins a new instance of explorer.exe -

James

There are many applications that, like Firefox, give you the option of opening a directory used by them. These will always spawn a new instance of explorer.exe.

For the most part, each instance will terminate shortly after the corresponding window is closed. The problem at hand is that once in awhile, an instance refuses to close, and is even non-stoppable using the usual mechanisms one would use to terminate a process. Also, explorer.exe is not the only process that occasionally hangs.

What gets me, is that even though people have been complaining about hung processes for a couple of years in various posts, I started to have this problem only in the last week or so. Maybe it's time to roll back and see what I install/change that triggers this problem.

I had the same problem as Zardos99 and others here and did exactly what Zardos99 suggested and it fixed my issues as well, I don't like the explorer going to the libraries either.

Also the Firefox bug and the utorrent bug are temporary, when I close the windows and also when I close the programs, the extra instances of explorer went away, but on the shortcut issue, it wouldn't. Until I did Zardos99's fix then all was good.

This worked fine for a while then IE9 broght it back again, when I updated to it., also when you update to IE9 you can''t go back to IE8, when you try to it says it isn't compatible with the current O/S, funny M$ never said that you couldn't revert back to IE8 when updating to the newer one. This is for Windows 7 any version.

Also IE9 causes another issue on the update, after a while you will notice the copy and paste function on your system go haywire as well. The solution I found to fix this is this, if you have Firefox, then you can correct this with no problems, if not get it.

Here is what to do, uninstall the IE9 update, then use Firefox to visit M$ to redownload IE9, and reinstall it, it should go to the programs this time, but importantly, do not get it again from the update program, or you will keep on having the same issue. I found when I done this, my explorer problems went away again, and the pain in the neck copy and paste problems went away as well.

The reason I gave this, is Windows 7 uses IE for the updates no matter what browser you use for your default, and when IE9 goes whacky it affects everything. Including the updates.

I hope this helps others as well, so far it has been a few months since I did this and everything is running good. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Vulcan